When the pandemic struck in March 2020, a group of Oregon health system executives agreed to stand up a real-time bed capacity system using GE Healthcare’s “command center” technology as a foundation. In 2022 the Oregon Capacity System will expand with increased bed-tracking functionality, infectious disease tracking by bed, and the addition of real-time emergency room capacity by hospital.
Prior to the project that began in March 2020, hospitals in Oregon, like every other state, tracked and reported capacity information manually, retroactively, and individually, resulting in outdated reports and potentially week-old data. The OCS is tracking 7,368 beds and approximately 800 ventilators across 60 hospitals, while processing 4.2 million data points each day, removing the need to manually track and enter capacity information. To date the system has saved participating hospitals 45,000 hours of labor, which amounts to roughly $3 million of productivity, and is expected to save even more time as further automation reduces the burden of manual reporting, according to a press release.
After the initial success of the bed-tracking effort, stakeholders decided to formalize the Oregon Capacity System under Apprise Health Insights, the data and analytics subsidiary of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems. In September 2021, Apprise formally took over the management and governance of the Oregon Capacity System. The vision for this statewide tool, the first in the country, is to develop a collaborative process with shared governance.
With a federal grant provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Apprise said it would extend OCS to every hospital in the state by summer 2022.
Like other states, Oregon continues to navigate the Delta wave. On Sept. 28, the Oregon Health Authority reported only 53 available adult ICU beds out of 645 in the state.
“Over the past two years, the Oregon Capacity System has provided an invaluable bird’s eye view of capacity across the state, helping us give timely care to our patients despite the strain the pandemic has placed on our resources. I expect the need will be even greater in the coming months as vaccination rates in rural Oregon remain low,” said Helene Anderson, regional director of capacity and throughput at Providence, in a statement. “Yet despite Oregon being one of the states with the lowest ratio of beds per capita, this system has given us such a clear and accurate view of capacity across hospitals that we’ve been able to maximize resources and even bring in patients from out-of-state. Having shared visibility has promoted collaboration at the state level to navigate capacity constraints and overcome challenges to patient flow to help patients get the care they need when they need it.”
Access to near-time bed availability data helps health systems across the state make decisions about staffing and resource utilization.
Apprise Health Insights and GE Healthcare are expanding the system beyond tracking current beds and ventilators only, to track and process more than five million data points per day, including acute, pediatric, ICU, specialty, rehab and psych bed availability data as well as PPE, Emergency Department and Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) availability.
This information will be pulled directly from the electronic medical records of every hospital in Oregon and fed into the Oregon State Capacity System in an automated fashion. By having access to capacity data in near real-time, hospital staff can expedite and escalate transfers to the nearest locations with available beds.
A governance group made up of hospital and healthcare system leadership, with both technical and operational expertise, as well as advisors from other stakeholders will provide overall system management and oversight.
